MARVEL COMICS – @Marvel
[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]
STORY: Tom Taylor
ART: Mahmud Asrar
COLORS: Ive Svorcina
LETTERS: VC's Cory Petit
COVER: Travis Charest
VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Mahmud Asrar with Ive Svorcina; John Tyler Christopher; Phil Jimenez; Phil Jimenez with Nolan Woodard; Rob Liefeld; Skottie Young; Pepe Larraz with Edgar Delgado
36pp, Color, $4.99 U.S. (April 2018)
Rated T+
X-Men created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
“The Hate Machine” Part 1: “Heal the World”
Last year, Marvel Comics launched a publishing event, entitled “ResurrXion,” in an attempt to shoot new life in its moribund X-Men line of comic books. This initiative involved the debut of several new X-Men comic book titles, including the color-coded X-Men: Blue and X-Men Gold.
Still trying to pump life into the X-Men, Marvel has launched a new X-Men color-coded comic book, entitled X-Men: Red. It will feature an X-Men team led by the resurrected, original Jean Grey, also known at times as Marvel Girl and Phoenix/Dark Phoenix. This new comic book is written by Tom Taylor; drawn by Mahmud Asrar; colored by Ive Svorcina; and lettered by Cory Petit.
X-Men: Red #1 (“Heal the World”) opens with Heather, a young mutant, being hounded by a mob of neighbors who want to kill her because she is a mutant. Her rescuers are Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Gentle, Namor, Trinary, Honey Badger, and Wolverine (Laura Kinney). Two months earlier, Jean Grey, newly brought back to life, decides that in order to protect mutants from a world that still hates them, she will need to find a way to protect the entire world. Of course, not everyone wants that.
Once upon a time, someone who thought they were being smart “man-splained” to me that corporations existed to provide goods and services. I didn't say anything at the time, but I firmly believed that many corporations, if not most, existed first and foremost to make money for their major stockholders and chief executives, officers, and/or managers. That includes corporations that own comic book publishers like Marvel Comics.
I imagine that in the early 1980s, the people that called the shots noticed how popular the Marvel Comics title, Uncanny X-Men, had become with readers and how its story of a band of mutants who fought for a world that hated and feared them really resonated with fans. That love had turned Uncanny X-Men into the top-selling comic book, at least in North America. So why make a lot of money from just one X-Men comic book title when Marvel could make a even more money with more X-Men publications?
First it was one graphic novel... or two, and then, an X-Men spin-off series and a miniseries featuring the most popular X-Men character (Wolverine). What started as a few X-Men and X-Men-related spin-offs became a trickle, then a stream, and the stream became a deluge. I think Marvel officially started ruining the X-Men, not when it became a franchise, but specifically when that franchise launched the comic book, X-Factor (cover dated: February 1986).
In the three decades plus since the debut of X-Factor #1, there have been many quality X-Men publications, but most X-Men comic books have been, to be generous, average at best. The X-Men went from being something special into nothing more than a cynically exploited cash cow for whatever money-grubbing corporation or CEO that owned Marvel Comics at any given time.
Writer Tom Taylor tries to recall the halcyon pre-X-Factor days of Uncanny X-Men in X-Men: Red. Writer Marc Guggenheim tries to recall the storytelling of the classic X-Men scribe, Chris Claremont (who is arguably still the best X-Men comic book writer ever) with X-Men: Gold, but the results are mixed. I feel like being cynical and saying that it is too late to make X-Men great again, but Taylor seems to be on to something here. I would like to see where this goes.
I do think that artist Mahmud Asrar is already delivering excellent work. I don't need to wait and see with Asrar; I am already declaring his art and graphical storytelling here a winner. I think Asrar's illustrations, which are beautifully colored by Ive Svorcina, make this issue's story, “Heal the World,” seem as if it is indeed part of a promising larger story. I have considered Asrar a star-creator in the making since I first saw his art in The New 52 title, Supergirl (2011).
So I see red, X-Men: Red that is. I will keep reading as long as Taylor and Asrar are making something that seems special like the Uncanny X-Men at its speak from mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.
8 out of 10
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
The text is copyright © 2018 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
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